February 26, 2009

I followed the recipe...

Whenever something goes wrong and I ask what might have happened, the excuse is always the same..."I followed the recipe."

And my response is..."You could not have followed the recipe. If you follow the same recipe every time, the result will be the same every time."

Like most bakeries and restaurants, we have master recipes for
everything we make. They are in a big binder and list the
ingredients as well as the directions. As far as I know, there are no ghosts
or gremlins in the shop that mess with the cookie doughs, bread doughs, cake batter or pastries when we are not looking.

So it's all about how you define "following the recipe." Here are the top ten examples of NOT following the recipe:

Use a measuring cup? The recipe calls for 1/3 cup of butter -- that's a little less than a stick of butter, right?

The recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar. You dip the cup measure into the bin of sugar and it comes out full -- more or less. You never really understood why there was space between the line marking one cup and the top of the cup anyway.

You use a heaping teaspoon of baking powder, baking soda or salt instead of leveling off the spoon because that's how you do it with your coffee in the morning.

The recipe says to cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. What exactly i's "fluffy?"

The recipe says to add the eggs one at a time -- surely they do not mean to wait after each addition until the egg is thoroughly mixed in do they?

A half cup of milk? There were only a few drops more than that in the carton anyway and no point putting an almost empty carton back in the refrigerator.

The butter is too hard to use, so it's ok to "soften" it in the microwave, right?

How many eggs have I cracked? I knew I should have been counting...

Someone has written in an adjustment to the recipe in the margin. That must be what I should use, right?

You dump all the ingredients into the mixer without ever reading the directions. Your excuse? Mary never reads the directions.

The really sad part is when you don't follow the recipe, it comes out badly, and then you do it again exactly the same way. This is when I repeat the joke about the one-legged dog.